SciShow Tangents - Homes

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green. And joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Sari Reilly. Hello. And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. I don't know if you guys heard about this, but last week, the United States Senate voted unanimously to extend daylight savings time forever, starting in 2023. Now, this has a couple more steps that it has to go through before it actually happens, but this is something that I've been asking for in one way or another for an awful long time. But I am curious how other people, including the two of you, feel about it. How do you feel about this? Oh, my answer's not very interesting. I feel like most things on this podcast have a very moderate stance. i think daylight savings time the the switching

Starting point is 00:01:05 back and forth is annoying because there's inevitably the moment of shock where i'm like oh i slept in or oh why is it so early or oh my microwave's off basically yeah yeah every this week every year is bad so so as we were recording this we just did this switch where you lose an hour and you have to wake up at like an hour before you normally would you have to go to bed an hour before you normally would and i i can't and certainly a five-year-old child can't no he's very confused cats also get quite confused with their food schedule yes yes the cats are very they know yeah and then you like look at them and you're like no i'm sorry it's not time yet and they're like yes it is i'm a cat you cannot gaslight me i don't use your numbers and

Starting point is 00:01:51 your clocks yeah it's tummy time would you be happy yeah i think just stop changing the clocks forever but you don't care that much but i don't care that much because and i think it's because i've mostly been an adult where my technology changes the time for me. Like, I remember it being a kid. It was a whole to-do of, like, let's run around the house. Let's, like, reset all our VCR clocks and clock clocks and whatnot. But now I don't have to think about it. So it's, like, a negligible negative impact to my life.

Starting point is 00:02:22 The clock part does not bother me at all. The waking up part is what bothers me. That's the bad part. You don't mind the waking up an hour, like the losing an hour. You don't mind that. I mean, it's annoying, but I hate waking up anyway.

Starting point is 00:02:34 Like every day I dread waking up. So it's really not any different. There's no day when I'm happy to awaken. Yeah, I'm cranky in the morning. What about you, Sam? How you feel? I hate losing that hour. I just feel like insane for two days or something.

Starting point is 00:02:55 Just an hour. But I have to get exactly seven hours of sleep. If I get too much, I'm really mean. And if I get too little, I'm really mean and stupid. If I get too much, I'm really mean. And if I get too little, I'm really mean and stupid. And I need that not to happen to me guaranteed once a weekend. But I also can't wrap my mind around what it would mean for the whole year.

Starting point is 00:03:22 I'm here to answer this question for you because I just did a bunch of research for this for a video that will come out before this podcast. Okay, great. for this for a video that will come out before this podcast okay great um which is that it means that for the entire year the sun will rise later and set later so the idea what congress wants to do is what most people want if you ask them which is they would like to have more hours in the evening with daylight so that their kids can play more outside so that they can do more errands in the daytime because if there's more hours in the morning, they're less likely to use them because, like Sari, they don't want it. They're not going to do stuff. They're cranky.

Starting point is 00:03:53 We're not going to seize the day as much as we want. Most people are not going to seize the day unless they've already been awake for a while. unless they've already been awake for a while. But there are people who think that, and there is some evidence to back up the claim that it's actually better for you to have more daylight in the mornings than in the evenings, because it gets you up,

Starting point is 00:04:15 it establishes a more healthy circadian rhythm, and that people who live, as I do, on the western edge of time zones, and so are already in a situation where we have later sunsets and later sunrises have some very minor but measurable negative health impacts because of that because we sleep less well maybe which is why I saw on Twitter people shouting that Congress was being anti-science I was like oh boy why can't why can't we just do

Starting point is 00:04:48 something without yelling uh yeah i don't give a rat's ass if the sun rises that's the right reaction also yeah in general don't give a rat's ass oh if only we could all be sam's every week here on Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts while trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, one of them will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sam. this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sam. Listing. Zero bed, zero bath. Sleeps 24,567. This treehouse location is perfect for large families that value an open floor plan and plenty of storage over personal space. Huge pantry,

Starting point is 00:05:38 custom made for storage of particularly sticky foods. Giant nursery, ideal for broods. Access via wing to many of the most popular flowers in town. All organic construction. Learn what the buzz is about. Contact your real estate agent today. I forgot to say this is a game. What am I talking about? Is it a beehive?

Starting point is 00:06:01 It's a beehive, baby. Hey, all right. I like this. You're going to give me more? Yeah, yeah. You got a beehive, baby. Alright, I like this. You gonna give me more? Yeah, yeah. You got a couple more. Listing. One bed, zero bath, 1.2 square inches. This gorgeous oceanside property has been recently vacated and is ready

Starting point is 00:06:16 for a highly motivated and molting individual. Cozy little beach bungalow, the perfect fit for homebodies. Don't like the location? Just lift this mobile home up and scuttle off to greener pastures. Snap this one up before someone else does. That's your favorite animal. Obviously the hermit crab.

Starting point is 00:06:34 Little shell for a hermit crab, yes. Okay, another one. Listing. One bed, one bath. Rustic Riverside Lodge. Custom built by industrious carpenters and ideal for a young family looking to get away from it all is self-sufficiency important to you this property comes with an aquatic garden ideal for the vegan lifestyle value security this quirky home features a moat and submerged entrance

Starting point is 00:06:56 waddle to the nearest real estate agent and start enjoying the simple mountain life today is it a beaver's den uh-huhhuh. Okay, here's the last one. The hardest one yet. Listing. One bed, zero bath, is sticks. This unique property is just a pile of twigs and garbage in a tree.

Starting point is 00:07:14 Not a good place to live, really, or to have babies, especially if your babies start out as orbs that roll around and break if they fall out of a tree. Some people don't seem to mind, though. Contact your real estate agent if you want to live

Starting point is 00:07:25 on top of a bunch of sticks in a tree for some reason. That's a bird's nest. Yeah. I was wondering if it was a specific kind of bird's nest. Like a pigeon? Pigeons are down my field. I was picturing a bald eagle because I saw a picture of a bald eagle that was covered in snow.

Starting point is 00:07:42 And I was like, build a roof, my friend. Wearing roofs. You're supposed to be majestic the topic for the day is homes and sam uh made us poems out of real estate listings of of natural homes created by or lived in by animals what a love what a lovely i would read a whole book of those to my son i think that that is i think that we hit on great kids books on this show once a week so sari what is a home so home as sam's poem implied can be in the human sense like a house or an apartment or some sort of shelter that is a residence so like you spend more time there than another building like a hotel or a cafe or something like that stuff you can put your stuff there to put your stuff there you can often sleep there

Starting point is 00:08:40 for extended periods of time as opposed to like a hotel, which is like brief, and of like a person or a family or people who choose to share the home together and like roommates. And with animals, then it seems to be like there are a wide variety of structures that animals build for various purposes, like for mating displays or to capture food, like a spider web. But I would consider the chunk of animal architecture things homes where they actually settle down, lay eggs, or use for some sort of shelter or protection. So a hidey hole or a nest is more of a home than a spider web is. But like also a spider web is kind of a home base.

Starting point is 00:09:31 So I don't know. That seems pretty homey to me. I'd say that's one of the most homey homes. Okay. Okay. You know what the etymology, like where does this word home come from? So this is part of what makes the definition so confusing. The etymology.

Starting point is 00:09:46 No one knows. I read two articles for house and home. And apparently it is like the word that we had for our dwelling or wherever we both considered like a structure that we used for home and like psychologically home has been lost to time and is just all over speculation so like we can kind of trace it back to words for like village like how hamlet sounds kind of like home yeah or like haunt or like other older words for dwelling. So there's an old English word ham, which is like dwelling place or house. Ham. Or residence.

Starting point is 00:10:32 Yeah, ham. Yeah, you know. Or pig. Or pig meat. Or pig meat. So the old English ham for pig meat had two M's and the old English ham for home had one M. So really, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:10:48 I'm stumped. And I read a bunch of like smart etymologists and like linguists talk about it of like, I mean, it seems like Old English ham and ham were related, but who knows how the meat was also the home. And like these origins are all disputed so i don't know it's where you eat your ham home's where the ham is yeah home's where the ham is so i think we can make up that that is my conclusion is wherever we can we can come up with the etymology because we know just as much as these other linguists we'll make it up ourselves yeah good old ham

Starting point is 00:11:22 friend well that must mean that it's time to move on to the quiz portion of our show. This week, we're going to be playing Tangents Home Truth or Fail. Truth or Fail. So homes can be tough to come by, even in the animal kingdom. There are so many sizes and materials and competitors to take into consideration. So animals have to devise their own creative strategies to make sure that they are able to get the right spot and keep it. The following are three stories of animal real estate drama, but only one of these stories is true. The other two

Starting point is 00:11:55 are big fat lies. Which one of these is the true story? Is it? Story number one. To make sure that its home isn't stolen when there is no one around to guard it, the giant burrowing frog will fill its mouth with water and flood their burrow with the water. They'll just glop a bunch of water up and then spit it all out inside of their house. Could be that, but it could also be story number two. Mantis shrimps will fight harder to steal another mantis shrimp's burrow if that burrow is smaller than ideal because it means the occupant is also smaller and thus easier to beat. Or it could be story number three. Chipmunks are sometimes

Starting point is 00:12:38 allowed to take up space inside of a nine-banded armadillo's burrow, but not for free. The chipmunks will bring back fruits and leaves for the armadillos's burrow, but not for free. The chipmunks will bring back fruits and leaves for the armadillos to munch on in exchange for the space. I don't think mantis shrimps have houses. I'm just gonna say it. I think they just walk around on the ground. What do they do at night?

Starting point is 00:12:57 What do they, they just walk around the whole time? I don't know. Do they even sleep? I don't know what shrimp do. Yeah, I don't either. Yeah, I actually can't, couldn't tell you. They don't need it. They don't need a house. They don't need what shrimp do yeah i don't either yeah i actually can't couldn't tell

Starting point is 00:13:05 you they don't need it they don't need a house they don't need to sleep they're fine the ocean's their home that chipmunk one sounds so damn familiar to me i feel like there are a lot of mutualisms and so i cannot tell you which ones are true or fake. Right. And also which one is just the plot of a Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers episode? Chip and Dale would never. But would Alvin? No. Alvin definitely would. I just think the Toad one sounds cool.

Starting point is 00:13:36 Like as soon as Hank said the Toad one, I was like, yes, this must exist. I love it. It's like, that's like the cartoon I want to watch for some reason. I don't know why I'm so entertained by this idea. It sounds like a Pokedex entry, honestly. It does.

Starting point is 00:13:51 A little bit. That's why you like it so much. That's probably it. It sounds like, or it sounds like the Wallywogs from Pikmin, which I'm also very into these days, where they just go blah, and then water comes out. I don't know anything about Pikmin. That's what we got to figure out. I've played the first two Pikmin games but I don't remember what a Wallywog is. It's just a frog. It's a big yellow frog that you got to fight with the blue guys because otherwise the other ones

Starting point is 00:14:16 start drowning. They wiggle and then you got to whistle. Why can't you ask us questions about Pikmin ever, Hank? Why do you got to ask us science questions? This is a fun game. I'm going to go with the chipmunks live inside Armadillo burrows. Probably some other animal and you just swapped them out, but this sounds familiar to me.

Starting point is 00:14:35 I'm going to go with frogs because I still think it's cute and I just didn't even really pay attention to the other two. I like the frog fact a lot as well but it is a big fat lie damn they they these do exist the giant burrowing frog is a frog in australia uh but it just burrows it doesn't blop a bunch of water out of its giant mouth and into its hole but i would love it if it was armadillos also do not rent out space to chipmunks. Shoot.

Starting point is 00:15:07 Sam! It's a great idea, but the thing that you didn't pick up on is that armadillos don't eat leaves and fruits. They eat insects. Oh, classic mistake on my part. Classic blunder. The reality is that mantis shrimps are famous for their club-like arms that they use to throw ridiculous punches.

Starting point is 00:15:29 And researchers wanted to see how mantis shrimps put those punches to work when looking for burrows. In general, if the burrow options available to a mantis shrimp are all unoccupied, the mantis shrimp will go for a burrow that's a little bit bigger for them because it gives them space to grow. But when researchers introduced a mantis shrimp to a tank with a plastic burrow that was already occupied by another mantis shrimp, they found that the mantis shrimp would fight harder and more successfully if they were fighting for a burrow that was slightly smaller than them,

Starting point is 00:15:57 like a little too small for them, because it meant the person living there was also smaller than them. And by person, I mean shrimp. That's fun. Yeah, they I mean shrimp. That's fun. Yeah, they're bullies. That's so mean. Somebody's got to find another person to be a bully to. It's like, oh man, lost my home. Somewhere out there there's this-

Starting point is 00:16:14 It's like the opposite of what the hermit crabs do, where they just fight each other for holes and make each other successively more homeless. Hermit crabs collaborate to exchange homes. Somewhere out there, there's the smallest manta shrimp in the world and that's it's too bad for that guy yeah it's just like i guess i'll just walk my home is wherever i am yeah he's plucky

Starting point is 00:16:37 well congratulations on being tied zero to zero next we're gonna take a short break that seemed really mean. Then it will be time for the Fact Off. Welcome back, everybody. It's time for the fact off. Our panelists have brought science facts in an attempt to blow my mind. After they have presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank Bucks to the thing that I think will make the best TikTok. And to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question.

Starting point is 00:17:20 It is this. Researchers are using machine learning to help people waste less energy in their homes. A 2020 study used publicly available energy consumption data from London homes to determine when each household usually uses their appliances. Then they trained an algorithm on that data to predict future energy use at different times of the day. Using that algorithm, they could turn people's smart devices on when they usually use them and off afterwards. That saves energy without asking people to change the amount of energy they actively use on a daily basis. Because a lot of waste comes from things like just forgetting to turn off the light when you leave a house. So how many kilowatt hours of sustained household energy

Starting point is 00:18:00 would machine learning save the average London household per day? Well, having no concept of what a kilowatt hour is, I'll say 12. Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only dummy here. I pay a power bill, but do I look at the kilowatt hours? I do not. A hundred? It's two. It's two? Oh, man. Okay. I guess kilo is a pretty big, that's a big watt. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:18:33 It's like a thousand of them. Yeah. It was 2.23, which isn't nothing. Like, you know, a hundred watt light bulb, which we barely have anymore for an hour would be a hundred watt hours. So you need 10 of those to make a kilowatt hour. So good on them. That means, Sam, you get to decide who goes first. I'm just going to get it out of the way and go first.

Starting point is 00:18:55 When people build houses, we have the ability to design them based on our preferences. Do you like to cook? Put a big old kitchen in your house. You want to feel secure? Put a gate, put some bars on your windows, cameras love to party build a ballroom and other animals can custom build their homes too bees like i mentioned earlier can barf up houses that fit their needs exactly some birds that don't live just on piles of sticks weave intricate little basket nests and

Starting point is 00:19:21 some animals dig expansive tunnel systems but a lot of animals are just stuck with what they can find, and almost none are as stuck with what they can find as the humble fish. They don't have hands. The flowing nature of their ocean environment washes things away. They kind of just have to, like, find a hole or a shell and say, this is where I live,

Starting point is 00:19:39 and that's all that they can do. But what if you gave a fish the chance to pick its dream home? Furthermore, why would you give a fish the chance to pick its dream home? Furthermore, why would you give a fish a chance to pick its dream home? And what could we possibly learn from this? So first we need to quickly address another problem with fish homes, specifically coral reefs. Humans are fucking them up. So scientists are working on ways to help struggling reefs. And one way to do this is with biodegradable 3d printed fake coral like structures that can keep fish around and give live coral a scaffolding to grow on as it bounces back so some scientists got this technology and

Starting point is 00:20:11 went about the work of dutifully recreating coral and other structures as they exist in nature but some scientists got a little weird with it and got to thinking this would be the perfect opportunity to figure something out about fish brains so So researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior printed up a bunch of shell-like structures that couldn't occur in nature, like huge shells with tiny openings or really long shells filled with holes everywhere. And they placed them in Lake Tanganyika in Africa, which is a lake full of shell-dwelling cichlid fish, and studied what the fish like. But they weren't just building fish dream homes for fun. By mixing up qualities of shelters that don't exist together in nature, scientists can get a better idea of what fish are actually looking for in a home as opposed to what's just available to them. And so one researcher put it this way, quote, I choose my beer based on taste, and I don't really care about the bottle it comes in. But someone watching me might notice that all my favorite beers come in green bottles and

Starting point is 00:21:09 conclude that I prefer green bottles. So what they discovered was that fish prefer very intact, hole-less as possible shells. And they also liked big long ones because who doesn't want a big old house? And they pick shells also that match the chirality or the coiling direction of the shells in their natural habitat. Like they'll stay away from, that one's going the wrong way, stay away from that one. The fish also seemed to prefer artificial shells

Starting point is 00:21:34 to natural ones. So obviously they know what they like and they will select for that. So what exactly can we learn from this research? Well, stuff about animal cognition and decision-making for sure, but bringing it back to reefs, stuff about animal cognition and decision making for sure. But bringing it back to reefs, and this is totally conjecture for me, not mentioned in the papers. But let's get down there and do some real estate development.

Starting point is 00:21:53 Plus up those old reefs, attract some vital fish species back with like unbeatable housing and get those healthy reefs back in shape. Unbeatable housing. Yeah. Get some big, long nooks and crannies in there. Yes. We'll start charging the fish rent, huh? Unbeatable housing. Yeah. Got some big, long nooks and crannies in there. Yes. We'll start charging the fish rent, huh? Come on. Yeah. You gotta bring me some leaves and fruit. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:13 What's your job? Oh, I'm a landlord. Or fish. Fish landlord. The most common job in the world now. There's so many fish. Do we have to 3D print these things? Could there be a better way to do it uh like made make them out of clay or something i don't know just like a like just the way that you make most plastic things well probably but i think that somebody figured out

Starting point is 00:22:36 how to 3d print this like corn based reef structure and then other people were like hey let's do some fun stuff with that right okay yeah that. That can be your competition business. There can be the 3D printed reef houses, and then you can have artisanal handmade reef houses for the fish that want a rustic flair. Imperfections that only come with a handcrafted shelf. A well-oiled home. Yeah, for all the cottage core sicklids out there.

Starting point is 00:23:05 Sarah, what do you got? So one thing that feels very human to me is how carefully we manicure the spaces around our houses, not just inside. Like carefully shaped hedges, mowed lawns, and meticulously weeded flower beds where only certain species we deem acceptable are allowed to grow. But animals put a lot of thought into their homes too, as we've talked about this whole episode. And one of the most intense gardeners out there is the lemon ant, Myrmalachista schumanni. They're not bright yellow and they don't eat lemons. They live in various parts of the Amazon rainforest and their name comes from some of the lemon-scented chemical alarms they store in their bodies, citronellol and two isomers of citral. And these ants also

Starting point is 00:23:51 carry around a classic defensive chemical too, called formic acid, which is the venom found in a variety of hymenoptera stings, so like bees, wasps, and ants. And besides using formic acid in bug-to-bug combat, lemon ants use it for some organic gardening. They chomp on the leaves of plants they don't like, stick their butt in the holes, and then inject formic acid into the vascular system to kill it off with dead leaf tissue showing up within 24 hours. And by plants they don't like, I mean any plant besides the trees they call home. So this has led to entire groves of trees called Devil's Gardens, where there are up to hundreds of one species of tree surrounded by very few other plants. Lemon ants carve out a nest in the crevices, hollow stems, and swellings called galls on all of these trees, which certainly sounds like

Starting point is 00:24:43 a hellish situation to stumble upon. So Devil's Gardens have been observed by humans across time and actually got their name from indigenous peoples who believed an evil forest spirit lived in them because that homogeneity of trees is an odd sight in an otherwise lush ecosystem like a rainforest. Later on, we thought that the tree species themselves were ruthless assassins like Doroia hirsuta, and they killed off other plants with chemicals in their roots to make more room to grow. chomping injection so their preferred tree species can thrive, making this a solidly

Starting point is 00:25:25 mutualistic relationship where the ants have more places to call home and the trees have more room to spread out. So the researchers estimated that some colonies of lemon ants have grown to millions of workers and thousands of queens, and they calculated that one devil's garden with 351 trees might be over 800 years old. So this is definitely an intergenerational family home kind of situation. And so even though humans definitely change our environments a ton to build our homes, the fact that the lemon ant can basically eliminate biodiversity in a chunk of the rainforest, all to make a little tree house is pretty freaking wild. How am I supposed to compete with devil's groves? I can't compete with devil's groves.

Starting point is 00:26:14 It's true, Sam. My first question is, you said they could be up to 350 years old. 800. 850 years old. 800. 850 years old. 800 years old, 351 trees. And it's quite a large area of tree. Yes. What prevents it from getting bigger?

Starting point is 00:26:36 Why haven't they taken over the whole rainforest yet? So this is a question. I read a paper about it. Perfect. Well, Sam, now you're really in trouble. Yeah. So I read a paper about the question I had. Oh, no. You didn't do that. I didn't do that. I had the same question, too. So it seems like the cost is increased herbivores, like the devil's gardens. In addition to being a concentrated nest for ants it is also

Starting point is 00:27:07 like a concentrated like kind of cleared out area for herbivores to come and like munch on the tree leaves so a lot of this is through estimates and like short observations and extrapolating bigger conclusions but i'm pretty sure these researchers basically like observed herbivores passing in and out of the area. And even though there were ants in these trees, plenty of them ate the leaves of the trees or like scurried around and ate the decomposing matter and whatnot. preferentially killed all other trees except for this one species uh other animals were like i'm gonna eat you too just enough that the trees can't like take over the entire forest and and continue spreading so weird so but like before we figured out that it was ants people would just like walk it and be like this is a very weird part of the forest who has done this. Satan has been to this piece of the forest. Where does this happen?

Starting point is 00:28:09 In the Amazon rainforest, there are different regions of the Amazon rainforest that can be dominated by different tree species in the devil's gardens. So, like, depending on what tree is most well-suited to attracting the ants, so the ants have evolved over time to be like, yes, this is our home, dominate different regions of the Amazon rainforest. Weird and cool. Well, now it's my turn to decide who wins this episode of SciShow Tangents. And I think that the winner is Sari because that's just very weird. And also, is there a universe where ants just ate the entire rainforest?

Starting point is 00:28:52 Oh, no. Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't seem impossible to me. No. If they could be doing this over 800 years, they could just be like, munch, munch, munch. Turns out we like one tree

Starting point is 00:29:02 and we're going to turn the entire rainforest into a monoculture of ant trees. Yeah, like they did to the rainforest what we did to bananas. Also, they did to the rainforest what we did to the rainforest. Yeah. Is what I thought you were

Starting point is 00:29:17 going to say. Also that. And now that means that it's time to ask the Science Couch where we've got listener questions for our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds. This one is from at tall teen turtle who asks, what is the breakdown on how many animals make homes versus how many animals use homes made by others and how many just don't do homes at all? Are most mammals homemakers and most fish free roaming? I know. Some fish that ain't. There are definitely fish that have homes, but I would say probably most fish.

Starting point is 00:29:50 I would guess that this is correct. Most fish are free roaming and probably a greater proportion, but maybe not a majority of mammals have a little house somewhere sometimes. A lot of rodents do and bats and like that's most of the species. And that's all of it yeah the only ones that don't i feel like are like i don't know horses yeah like deer just sort of walk around and lay down wherever yeah how did i do sir i mean so i in the email picking the questions i prefaced this with like this is a really interesting question that is going to be really hard to google yeah that's your problem not my problem yeah from what i can tell by like our definition of home at the top of the episode so saying like horses like standing out in a field

Starting point is 00:30:36 does not count as a home like migratory species which build stopping points don't necessarily count as a home except for like a salmon that returns to a spawn it feels like a majority of animals like of mammals have some sort of like structure and i think when you look into like the different kinds of animals once you take insects into account then like the number of things that have a structure or a nook or cranny that they call home greatly increases. So many ants out there living in a big home. Yeah, they got a big house with a lot of friends in it. Yeah. So a lot of animals use shelter. But the most interesting part of this question that I

Starting point is 00:31:22 didn't realize was going to be the rabbit hole that I fell down is animals that live in other animals. Oh, we're homes, aren't we? We're a home, baby. Yeah, home is where the heart is because you got heartworms. I mean, I started looking at a cuckoo parasite, like brood parasites, which is those birds that lay eggs in other nests. But there are huge estimates of how many parasites there are. So according to one or two papers, parasites are in about 15 of the generally recognized 35 animal phyla. So that's like 43%. And these researchers estimate that nearly half of all animals may have a parasitic lifestyle. And there have been transitions from a, just like a

Starting point is 00:32:15 carnivorous, herbivorous, whatever, lifestyle to parasitism at least 223 times in evolutionary history that they can tell from like genetic markers and whatnot. A lot of them are worms. So like annelids. I don't know what rotifers are, if we would call them worms. Little guys. A lot of them are little guys. But also like mollusks, also arthropods, also cnidarians.

Starting point is 00:32:41 Like there are parasites across a lot of phyla. And so if you want to consider parasites as animals that make homes or use homes made by others and the bodies of others as homes, then you could get up to millions, millions of animals that do that instead of making their own shelter. So I would say that's the most popular home. And that's that's the weirdest part of this breakdown. I just wanted to make an excuse to talk about parasites because you don't think about them very much. The most popular house is somebody else. Gross.

Starting point is 00:33:23 Well, if you want to ask the Science Couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShowTangents Patreon and ask us on Discord. Thank you to Mary Nara on Discord, at Jen Aradia, and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out,

Starting point is 00:33:42 super easy to do that. You can go to patreon.com slash scishowtangents to become a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes that are very silly and very fun. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's very helpful and it helps us know what you like about the show. And finally,

Starting point is 00:33:58 if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thanks for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes, along with Seth Glicksman. Our story editor is Alex Billow. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto.

Starting point is 00:34:15 Our editorial assistants are Deboki Chakravarti and Emma Douster. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hoffmeister and me, Hank Green. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. Snails poop into their shells, which I guess sounds gross, but we poop in our homes too.

Starting point is 00:34:56 They do? It's all... And then it just stays in there forever. It fills up its big poop chamber. No, no, no. It's all good as long as there's a good waste removal system in place, which they also have. Their poop slides out their anus into their shell and then out an anal pore in their shell. I think sometimes they just poop directly out, but I think sometimes they poop in and then back out. But anyway, when that poop leaves the snail's home, it can contribute to the spread of african swine fever virus this virus survives

Starting point is 00:35:26 longer in snail intestines than it does in the soil so as snails move around and empty poop out of their mobile home the virus spreads to new areas where unsuspecting pigs might live just seems like such a bad way to do it you don't need a butt and an anal pore you just need a butt you're making things very confusing. Which part of these, which thing is the butt? Is it the pooper part? Or is it the part that's on the end?

SciShow Tangents - Homes

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